Lecture 7.1: The Case for Representatives

What is the purpose of government? Why should we have a State? What kind of State should we have?
Even within a political community, there may be sharp disagreements about the role and purpose of government. Some want an active, involved government, seeing legal and political institutions as the means to solve our most pressing problems, and to help bring about peace, equality, justice, happiness, and to protect individual liberty. Others want a more minimal government, motivated, perhaps, by some of the disastrous political experiments of the 20th Century, and the thought that political power is often just a step away from tyranny. In many cases, these disagreements arise out of deep philosophical disagreements.
All political and legal institutions are built on foundational ideas. In this course, we will explore those ideas, taking the political institutions and political systems around us not as fixed and unquestionable, but as things to evaluate and, if necessary, to change. We will consider the ideas and arguments of some of the world’s most celebrated philosophers, including historical thinkers such as Plato, Hugo Grotius, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and more contemporary theorists such as Michelle Alexander, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Bryan Caplan, Angela Davis, Ronald Dworkin, Jon Elster, John Hart Ely, H.L.A. Hart, Michael Huemer, Andrew Rehfeld, and Jeremy Waldron.
The aim of the course is not to convince you of the correctness of any particular view or political position, but to provide you with a deeper and more philosophically-informed basis for your own views, and, perhaps, to help you better understand the views of those with whom you disagree.

教學方

Alexander Guerrero

Assistant Professor

腳本

[MUSIC] The case for representatives. [MUSIC] Hi, welcome back. In the modern context, we're in large agreement that political systems should be run democratically. What exactly this requires is a matter of debate and controversy, of course. But there's some basic idea that the government should be of the people, by the people, and for the people. The people figure prominently in the idea of democracy. Particularly the idea that the people should govern, and that government should act on their behalf and for their interests. As discussed in the previous unit on political community, it's controversial exactly how to think of the people, the demos. It's hard to define this in a way to identify who exactly the people are that are relevant. But even once we have settled on some understanding of the demos, many questions remain. One of the most pressing is this one. How should we, the people, the demos, actually govern? How should we decide what to do? What problems are most urgent? What laws should be enacted? How those laws should be enforced? How we should engage with neighboring countries, and so on. There are many political questions, problems, and issues, and settling on democracy in some sense, really does not do much to settle on one single way of deciding these questions. As discussed in the previous segment, the modern world has mostly converged on a series of answers. We should use representatives. We should choose those representatives through elections. And those elections should be free, open, inclusive and egalitarian. And we should have free and open political discussion leading up to those elections and surrounding politics more generally. In this segment, we'll think about one of those features in particular, the use of political representatives. So focusing in on the representative part. When we think about democracy, ruled by the people it might seem natural to literally have all of us rule. So why is it that we choose just a subset of us and turn political power over to those people? This is a question that gets largely bypassed in contemporary political debates and even somewhat within contemporary political philosophy. But it's worth thinking about the justification for the use of representatives at all. So as to think about whether that justification makes sense, and whether our current representative systems actually help us achieve whatever it is that we want representatives, in general, to help us achieve. And it does seem that using representatives requires at least some justification. For there's a natural alternative, a sort of more simply democrat alternative. This is the use of what's called direct democracy, in which all of us would participate in making political decisions directly. So we still see this in many places for some kinds of issues where we have referenda or ballot initiatives. There are different ways in which these work, or might work. One option is to require that certain number of signatures be obtained to demonstrate that an issue is one that many people think needs a decision, and then that issue can be put on an open ballot. Where we all get to vote directly on what should be done whether some change should be implemented or some existing piece of legislation should be altered, or enacted, or retracted. So that's one kind of way of doing direct democracy. Another option is to have sort of regular, open to all town halls, legislative sessions deliberative forums, where everybody could attend or participate. And out of which, political decisions will be made. So there are logistical difficulties here. Millions of us can't all fit in the same room or talk together at the same time. But there are responses to these difficulties. So we could attend virtually, in some sense, using modern technology. Or there could be thousands of these town halls operating at once sort of in tandem all considering the same question. And with the input of each of these aggregate it in to some kind of total vote. Or we could all just vote on proposals on our own without ever coming together to really talk about them. These are all certainly possibilities. And direct democracy of this kind really has certain kinds of virtues. So first, this kind of direct democracy gives everyone in the community a real say in what happens, and real power over what happens. Second, this kind of direct democracy doesn't require having all of us turn power over to someone else, some representative as representative systems do. This arguably good from a perspective of political equality and direct Democracy ensures that those making political decisions, come from the full range of backgrounds included amongst the people. Because those making political decisions just are the people. We don't have to worry about how it sort of representative our representatives are. Additionally there are no concerns about some large number of us trying to choose some small number of people, who will represent our interests well. And then having us try to monitor what that small number of people. What the representatives are actually doing. To see if what they're doing is in our interests or not. So why are direct democracies the exception rather than the rule. What's the justification for using political representatives? It's important at the outset to know that what we're looking for is not, or not just the reason that representative democracy has in fact come to be this standard system everywhere. In terms of the history behind that development. What we're looking for is something more philosophical, something like a moral justification for using representatives. And the reason this justification is needed, arguably, is because there's a pretty strong default case for direct democracy. At least from a perspective of political equality. And that's particularly true given that what we're dealing with is the question of the use of political power and the creation of law that's going to be backed by coercive force. So this typically gives rise to concerns about what philosophers call political legitimacy, really a demand for moral justification for the use of political power. And the case here is no different than in the case of representatives. Although, we are, undoubtedly very familiar with representative government at this point. So you might think, well, we have representatives everywhere but there's a question, what makes that justifiable? What makes that morally acceptable or appropriate? So, why representatives? There are two main significant reasons. So, both focus not on procedural values or norms, but on values or norms that relate to the outcomes that the political system will bring about. So, the first focuses on practical kinds of considerations, that suggest that representative systems will do better than direct democracy. And the second focuses on epistemic considerations, that suggest that representative systems will do better than direct democracy. So these practical arguments and the epistemic arguments are interrelated. So some of the epistemic reasons are related to practical constraints, having to do with time, energy, and individual aptitude. So here's some of the reasons that we think systems of political representation will do better than direct democracy along certain important dimensions. So first there's a division of labor argument. Representatives are solely, or at least mostly, devoted to the task of making law and policy, that's their full time job. This means that they can focus on that task, and it's become, in the modern world, a very complicated and arduous task. It's not easy to make law and policy. So, representatives don't have to try to fit political research, analysis, and discussion and deliberation, into the rest of their very busy lives and occupations. This can be their full-time task. So we have this kind of division of labor argument. Second and related to this, is an epistemic argument sort of connected to the division of labor point. So representatives are likely to be much better informed about political issues than most of us will be. So they have time to research, consult experts, consult other people living in the jurisdiction, deliberate and debate with each other. And in many places they'll have a considerable staff helping them. So they can come to have a more informed opinion about what needs to be done and which problems are most urgent. Third, and also related to the epistemic argument, there's a perspectival argument focusing on the perspective representative's can occupy. So first of all, representatives are not forced to make decisions one at a time. They're in a position to make decisions holistically, weighing trade offs, making compromises when necessary, balancing competing interests, and having a sense of the relative priority, how important an issue is, and of budget limitations and constraints. So all this allows for the views of individual citizens to be refined and enlarged in James Madison phrase. So we can take sort of the initial input and filter it through these representatives who can kind of see the big picture, and come out with decisions that are refined and enlarged in a way from our individual perspectives. Finally, there's a practical argument based on expediency and crisis. So because they're fewer in number, representatives can come together and make decisions quickly and expediently in the event of urgent crises. Also, it's possible to provide sensitive information to the relevant decision makers in a short amount of time. So if we're dealing with confidential information or strategic information. We can get it to the representatives in a short amount of time in a way that'd be hard to get to everybody in some responsible way. And furthermore, the representatives can then take and incorporate all this information and quickly make a decision with it. So all of these provide reasons to suggest that our political system will do better from an outcome-related perspective, if we use representatives rather than make the decisions and laws directly ourselves. So this suggestion is bolstered by the substantial literature documenting the extent of the ignorance of the general public, all of us, about all matters of politics, law and economics. So the economist Brian Kaplan has argued for example. That we're all systematically biased and wrong about matters related to economics. So that we're systematically in error about which economic policies will actually promote our own ends. Others have pointed out since the ground breaking work of Anthony Downs, that it's rational for us to be ignorant in general about all kinds of political issues. Given how unlikely it is that any one of our votes will make a difference to who wins or loses the election, or what vote will carry the day. So wouldn't be worth our time, this argument goes, to do a lot of research and homework to have an informed opinion, and so it's rational that we remain ignorant. So whether or not that suggestion holds up, it's well established that we are, in fact, widely ignorant about a great deal that's relevant to making law and policy. So we might think that we're embracing representatives as a way of overcoming this problem in addition to the above problems. So there remains a difficult question about whether the better outcomes we might achieve through using representatives is sufficient to morally justify using them, rather than having direct democracy. So we get a sort of tradeoff, in theory here, between the outcomes we might get, and the procedures that we're using. So, in general much of the discussion of this unit will focus on trade offs between better outcomes, and what might appear to be, in some sense, morally better procedures. So if we think that we lose a little something from a perspective of political equality when we move from direct democracy to using representatives, but if we also think that this loss in terms of procedural equality is going to be outweighed by the significant gain in the quality in terms of the decisions that'll be made,. Then this is one example of such a trade-off between, sort of, procedure and outcome. There'll be questions about when these trade-offs are acceptable. So, we might have morally worse procedures but for better outcomes. And we'll have to ask when we should tolerate that kind of trade-off. For example we could ask, what if there was an omniscient, benevolent individual who would make better decisions than we would for the world and for our own interests? So you imagine someone who has more information, they're omniscient and they're benevolent. They're trying to act on our behalf. Would that justify just having that person have all the political power getting to serve in some sense as our dictator. So this would highlight the tension between the procedure, so it's bad from a sort of political equality perspective. But arguably really good from an outcome perspective. So one question we might ask is whether this omnevolent, benevolent dictator would have a right to do this, would have a right to have political power. Whether or not we authorize it. And then there's another questions, whether we should authorize that person to serve this role if there were such a person. So the political philosopher David Estlund discusses these issues of political authority in his book, Democratic Authority. He writes, even if we grant that there are better and worse political decisions, which I think we must, and that some people know better what should be done than others. We all think some are much worse than others. It simply does not follow from their expertise that they have authority over us, or that they ought to. This expert boss fallacy is tempting. But someone's knowledge about what should be done leaves completely open what should be done about who is to rule. You might be correct but what makes you boss? So this is the central question for Eslin and it's worth thinking about. So in the case of using representatives it seems most people do tolerate the idea that the better outcomes if there are in fact better outcomes. From using representatives are enough to outweigh the procedural downside from using representatives. That namely, some subset of us have to have all the political power, and the rest of us just get to have a formally equal say in choosing who that subset's going to be. But it's worth at least pausing to notice that we do, in fact, tolerate this tradeoff. Note that for everything that I've said so far, I've been speaking just about the justifications for using representatives, not the justification for using elected representatives. It might seem intuitive that these two things go together, but that is in many ways just a result of the pervasiveness of systems of elected representatives. So in the next segment, we'll look at the particular grounds for using elections to choose our representatives.